It was April Fool's Day, but hundreds of thousands of public sector workers will be forgiven for not getting the joke. Yesterday, drastic cuts to the redundancy terms for civil and public servants took effect – changes imposed by the Cabinet Office without the agreement of members of my union, the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS).

These cuts have been driven through in the face of mass opposition from the government's own workforce, resulting in 200,000 PCS members on strike on 8, 9 and 24 March, budget day. And against the wishes of almost half of the Labour party's backbenchers, 120 of whom are among the 175 MPs who have signed a parliamentary motion opposing the cuts – an unprecedented level of support for an industrial issue.

This week, in the Guardian, Simon Jenkins wrote that he longed for "a real Labour voice". He should listen to us. We agree with him that it is outrageous that a political consensus has been allowed to be built around protecting the banks and cutting public services to pay for it. It is also outrageous that amid the depressing inevitability of the "debate" around public spending, none of the three main political parties have any real plans to tackle the yawning tax gap that starves our economy of more than £120bn a year.

Research by the chartered accountant Richard Murphy shows that to the £25bn a year lost through tax avoidance, you can add £28bn in uncollected tax, and a massive £70bn in tax evaded by some very wealthy and very powerful individuals and organisations. Addressing just some of this scandalous hole in our public finances would obviate the need for any cuts to jobs, pay or public services. So you have to wonder if this is what Labour, the Tories and Lib Dems really want.

The depressingly familiar sound of party leaders trading pledges on cutting "waste" and making "efficiency savings" simply exposes further the democratic deficit that has opened up in UK politics. With the election campaign under way, working people are hardly spoiled for choice for candidates who recognise that cutting the public sector to prop up the banks hardly makes sound economic sense – let alone being grossly unfair. Cutting redundancy terms will inevitably lead to more job cuts in the civil service and more privatisation, because both will be cheaper. The impact on the delivery of good quality public services in the future will be devastating. No, not funny.